


a zombie's guide to falling in love after the apocalypse

by ghosthunter



Category: Taking Back Sunday
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-17
Updated: 2012-09-17
Packaged: 2017-11-14 11:49:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosthunter/pseuds/ghosthunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about it being hot isn't really the actual heat. It's the sweat, and the walking in the sunshine after they've run out of gas because they were afraid to leave the highway and get trapped where there were more buildings and more potential to have their flesh devoured.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a zombie's guide to falling in love after the apocalypse

It's hot.

The thing about it being hot isn't really the actual heat. It's the sweat, and the walking in the sunshine after they've run out of gas because they were afraid to leave the highway and get trapped where there were more buildings and more potential to have their flesh devoured.

Most of all, it's the smell of rotting flesh heating up.

These days, in addition to being able to hear the zombies before they encounter them, they can smell them, too. Despite the smell, this is a blessing - the stench may be thick in the air, but it also masks the smell of live meat. That, or they're starting to smell like the walking dead themselves.

That may well be true - John can't remember the last time he had an actual shower.

They've been walking all day and spent the night before in the hayloft of a barn, taking turns keeping lookout in case a zombie wanders in and climbs up to where they are, even though they pulled up the ladder and the zombies aren't coordinated enough to climb walls. (John is waiting for the day, though.)

They can hear the car before they see it.

John automatically draws the gun at his hip, just in case - they'd survived the living dead this long, and John doesn't want his downfall to be someone who wants to take his ammunition or what little food and water they have left. Adam just holds out his arm, thumb in the air, hoping that they're lucky and this person will be kind enough to give them a ride for a while. Beats walking, anyway.

The guy in the truck is the type to shoot first and ask questions later, and on one hand, John isn't really sure that he can blame the guy. On the other hand, he's shooting at them. John fires a wild shot back before diving to the ground, rolling down the slope of the right-of-way and into the stagnant water of the ditch.

Tires screech to a halt and John can hear Adam yelling, his voice hoarse. John can't remember the last time they saw someone other than each other, and they haven't spoken for days - they've run out of things they could possibly want to say to each other, and it's better to keep silent in case the zombies hear.

John climbs back up the rise, wet and stinking, with scratches on his arms from the straw-like tall grass and God only knows what else was down there. Truck Guy is broad and balding, his skin red from the heat and from exertion. Adam's hair is stuck to his forehead with sweat and he keeps the shotgun aimed straight into the guy's face.

"You okay?" he asks, directing the question to John without moving or looking away from Truck Guy.

"Yeah, just - got a couple of scratches is all," John replies, holding his own gun loosely at his side.

"I'm sorry for shootin' at you boys," the guy says, lowering his gun. John can see that he's still ready to shoot if Adam forces his hand - if, say, Adam wanted to try and hold him up and steal the truck. "I'm sure you can understand why I'd be a little concerned about a couple of people wanderin' around in the middle of nowhere."

"We're not looking to eat your brains," Adam says. "We're just looking for a ride."

"Where to?" Truck Guy asks.

"Anywhere," Adam says, lowering the shotgun. "Our car broke down and we've been walking for a couple of days. We need to get to some place we can get a new vehicle."

"And some supplies," John tosses out. Truck Guy turns toward John, and seems to assess him. John's too skinny and his hair and beard are both a scraggly mess. He can guess what he must look like now, unwashed and having rolled down a hill into a ditch. Adam's got the same problem with his beard and hair that John does, and he knows they don't exactly look like the best hitchhikers to pick up. John thinks he probably looks a little like a serial killer.

"I'll take you as far as the nearest safe-house," Truck Guy says, sounding hesitant. "It's 'bout 40 miles from here, outside-a Dallas. They ain't gonna let'cha stay there but'cha can get a good night's sleep. And clean up." He says the last with a nod to John, who can feel the muck from the ditch drying on his chest in the sun.

"Why couldn't we stay?" John asks, even though he knows that Adam wouldn't want to. Truthfully, he doesn't either, but he's curious.

"Ain't no room. Gotta keep people movin' through, y'know?" he explains, and heads back toward the truck. John watches him check inside the camper shell for anything that might have crawled inside during their discussion. "Hop up in the back," he tells them.

The air seems even thicker inside the camper shell, and John breaks out in a sweat almost immediately, but it's relatively clean and there's a mattress on the bed of the truck for them to sit on. Truck Guy must drive around picking people up regularly.

Adam stretches out on the mattress and closes his eyes. John leans against the side of the truck and watches out the window as abandoned cars and tall grass fly by.

They're a few miles from the safe-house when the truck swerves, sending John and Adam flying from one side of the truck's bed to the other. John can hear Truck Guy swearing, his voice muffled by the back window of the truck. John manages to get upright in time to see a grey-green hand slam against the side of the camper shell.

The stench is overwhelming, and John swallows against the urge to gag even as Adam is scrambling across the bed of the truck for the shotgun. The glass cracks beneath the zombie's fists and Truck Guy is screaming obscenities as he fires indiscriminately into the horde that has caused him to swerve the truck into a ditch.

Adam's got a cut on his forehead and blood running into his eyes and he slams the barrel of the shotgun against the cracking window and fires, finishing off the glass and splattering zombie brains all over the zombie's companions outside. They fall to eating each other, smearing rotting flesh into their mouths.

"Drive," John yelps, as he starts firing and Truck Guy fires a few more shots into the crowd before trying to start the truck. It sputters a few times and fortunately comes to life, and they bump across the median before making it back on the pavement.

Adam has blood dripping off his chin and matting down the hair of his beard, and he grins at John. His teeth are smeared with blood, too. "That was interesting," he says, then wipes his hand across his forehead, wincing. "I'm hurt."

"No shit," John says, and Adam laughs, blood dripping onto his shirt, then onto the mattress. John grabs his backpack and starts rummaging through it, looking for something that Adam can use to clean his face.

It's only a few more minutes before the truck screeches to a halt and John looks up to see a fence being hauled open to admit the truck. Once the gate is open, John reaches out frantically to keep from being thrown across the back once again as Truck Guy floors it and zooms through the gates. He screeches to a stop beneath a carport and John slithers out of the back.

"Well, that was fun," Truck Guy says, inspecting the broken window with its splatter of zombie gore. He peers through the hole at Adam. "You're bleedin', kid." Adam nods his head, crawling toward the back of the truck to get out.

"Hit my head," he says. "I'll be all right."

"We'll get someone to look at it," Truck Guy says. He reaches out and grabs the shoulder of a kid that's sprinting by, alerted to their presence by the screeching tires and clanging of fences. John thinks how bizarre it must be to grow up in a world like this, with nothing between the living and the walking dead but fences and shotguns. "Run get Greta," Truck Guy tells the kid, and the boy nods, running off in the direction he came from.

"She ain't a real doctor, but she's what we got," Truck Guy says, then extends his hand to John while Adam's climbing out of the truck bed, holding a torn t-shirt to his forehead. "I'm Jimmy, by the way."

"Nice to meet you," John says. Now that the guy wasn't shooting at them and they weren't in danger of dying, anyway. "I'm John. This is Adam."

"Hi," Adam says, pulling the t-shirt away from his head and looking at it, like he's trying to assess how much blood he's lost and is still losing. John hates the way head wounds bleed.

He wishes he didn't know that head wounds bleed profusely, no matter how insignificant they are.

***

The world ends on a Thursday.

Sort of.

The infection starts on a Thursday, but by the time anyone with the power to do anything - if there's anything that can be done - finds out about it on the following Monday, it's too late.

When the infection starts spreading, John is sitting in an airport. He's got a layover in Houston for his flight to Los Angeles and he's trying to get the lyrics he's been working on for days to fall into place.

It's the last flight to take off from Houston, maybe forever.

John isn't sure how long they have left in the flight when the pilot comes on and tells everyone that they haven't received clearance to land yet, but they'll be landing shortly. The flight ends up taking way longer than it was supposed to, and the pilot finally says that they're landing.

The terminal is eerily quiet, right up until the moment a young woman comes running from the baggage claim, screaming.

No one wants to believe her hysterical screams of zombies. She sounds crazy, but none of them can ignore the bleeding bite wound on her arm. She's past their help.

John ends up locked in the VIP flight lounge with a group of other people, clustered around a television, watching a news feed of the destruction of LA. John wonders briefly if he's asleep - surely something that looks so much like a movie can only be a dream - but he's already pinched his arm and knows that he's awake.

People are calling their loved ones. John takes out his phone, then realizes that he can't make the call. He doesn't want to know what's happening back in Kansas. He isn't sure what would be worse - knowing that someone he loves is still alive and worrying about them, or getting no answer and having to assume that they're dead.

It's a long time before there's moaning and scratching at the door. One woman starts sobbing, and the moaning turns to growling - the zombies know they're in the room, and the zombies want to eat them. John hears gunshots that echo even though they're on the other wide of the doors. His ears ache.

Then there's nothing but silence.

"They're dead," a voice says from the other side of the door. Everyone in the VIP lounge jumps, startled. "Open up."

The group of people on the other side of the door is led by a short, stocky Latino man, who greets them with a gun in both hands.

"You can come with us," he says, "or you can starve to death here." He doesn't come in the room, and the three people with him fan out. John assumes they're keeping watch for more zombies. They're all splattered with blood, and probably other things that John doesn't want to think about. Nobody in the lounge makes a move to get up and join them.

He shrugs. "Stay here and die, then," he says, then turns in the doorway.

"Will you give me a gun?" John finds himself saying as he gets to his feet.

"If you can keep from shooting us, or yourself," the guy says, and John nods. Maybe he's not a great shot, but he knows how to fire.

"I can do that," John says.

"Chad, get the man a gun and let's get out of here," the guy says, and a stocky dude with a shaved head reaches into the backpack he's carrying to offer John a weapon.

John would rather take his chances with the zombies and being eaten than to slowly starve to death in the VIP lounge of an airport.

***

The safe-house's doctor is a woman named Greta, who admits sheepishly that she hadn't yet finished medical school when the outbreak occurred. Still, she's got excellent bedside manner and isn't likely to need to perform any intensive surgery - she knows how to bandage up the cut on Adam's head, and that's all they're asking for. She also assures them that Adam probably doesn't have a concussion, but makes sure they know that if he feels sleepy or nauseated, he should come to her immediately.

Jimmy takes them on a brief tour of the house, showing them the bathroom - John almost dances with glee at the sight of a real shower - then the room they'll have to share for the night. He explains that he's sorry they'll have to share a bed, but there's plenty of extra blankets and pillows if one of them wants to take the floor.

Jimmy's wife is a round, pretty woman with dark hair. Adam looks at her like she's a goddess on earth when she offers to cut their hair before they head off to take showers, and offers them clean clothes until theirs can be laundered.

John almost breaks down in hysterical giggles. He grabs hold of Adam's arms and shakes him. "Showering! Clean clothes!" he squawks, and Adam actually does start giggling, then has to lean against the wall to catch his breath.

Adam's waiting in the hallway to take his turn in the shower when John comes out of the bathroom, his wet hair stuck to his forehead. Adam looks up and down the hallway before leaning in close to John. He pushes newly-shorn hair behind his ears, but it slides loose and falls back into his eyes almost immediately.

"Can you come look at it?" he asks, and John nods, stepping backward into the bathroom and giving Adam room to follow. Adam pushes the door shut and locks it before stripping off his shirt, turning his back to John.

On Adam's shoulder is a livid red-purple bite mark.

"It looks infected," John says. Adam sighs dramatically.

"Still?" Adam asks. John nods, the blur of motion visible in the fogged-up mirror.

"You really need someone to look at it," John says. Adam turns around and leans against the bathroom counter.

"Except if someone looked at it, they'd know that it was a bite, and then they'd either kill me or turn me in," Adam says, keeping his voice low. John knows what it would cost them to have this conversation overheard.

"Adam, it's infected, and you--"

"No. Either they're going to think I'll turn into a zombie soon, or they'll know I'm Z-resistant. See if you can... maybe there's some, I don't know, peroxide here somewhere. See if you can get some? Tell Greta you want it for your scratches or something."

"I don't like lying to people."

"Well, sometimes you have to."

***

The group becomes five.

The Latino man is named Eddie, the leader, and the one who told the people at the airport that they could leave, or starve. John wonders if those people starved to death, or ate each other, or turned into zombies then ate each other, but he seems to be the only one concerned. John's noticed that it's Eddie's way, or the highway. Everyone else seems fine with that.

Chad's the weapons man. He's not the best shot out of the five of them, but he can load a shotgun faster than anyone John's ever seen. (That's not saying much, but it's something.) He always seems to know the best place to find weapons, and he taught John the trick to making Molotov cocktails.

Hayley is Chad's girlfriend, and the only girl in their group. She and Chad were on vacation in Los Angeles when the outbreak happened. She's one hell of a shot with any kind of gun. Chad jokingly explains it away as her being from Tennessee, and John just nods, because that sounds like as good a reason as any to be a good shot.

Eddie hooked up with Adam at the same hotel where he found Hayley and Chad. Adam's not a great shot, and he doesn't really know a lot about guns, but what he does know is how to hot-wire a car. He keeps his mouth closed about why he knows it, and John doesn't ask.

Adam is also, John learns later, Z-resistant.

What that means, Eddie explains one night while John is fretting about every trope from every zombie film he's ever seen, is that a zombie can bite Adam, and instead of turning, his body fights off the infection. Sure, it looks like he's going to die and turn into a zombie while it's happening, but Eddie swears that's not the case.

From the way Adam, pale and sweaty and feverish, is fighting against Hayley and Chad as they try to hold him down, John thinks Eddie has to be wrong.

Two days later, Adam is back on his feet. He still has a bite wound, but his fever has broken and he's not a zombie.

John wonders how he'd find out whether or not he's Z-resistant, and how they found out that Adam was to start with. Have they been through this before? What made them wait it out instead of killing him straight out?

Adam admits later that this isn't his first time being bitten, and that he'd been bitten and stumbled back to his hotel room before the outbreak happened in full force. He'd slept off the fever and infection, and the next thing he knew there were zombies all over Los Angeles and Eddie was shooting up their hotel.

"Is it transmittable?" John asks one day, and Hayley lets out a sharp, unattractive bark of a laugh, before blushing and ducking her head.

"The government has started circulating propaganda that it's like an STD. Transmitted by sexual contact, you know?" Eddie explains. Adam stares at the tabletop. John wonders if he hates discussing things like this, especially since John now knows that the government is actively seeking people who are Z-resistant to try and create an antivirus from.

"Oh," John says. He's sorry he asked.

"Also, it's kind of hit-or-miss," Chad adds in. "They're saying only 1 in 10 will become resistant by transmission. Everyone else just becomes a zombie."

"Oh," John says, swallowing hard. "That sucks."

"Yeah, it does," Adam says.

***

It's nice to have on clean clothes and sleep in a bed. John doesn't even care that it's a small bed and Adam keeps sticking his feet on John's calves to warm them up. He's doing it because there's actual air-conditioning, which is another unusual luxury that makes John never want to leave the bed again. That, and he's had a shower and a hot meal.

He tries to push Adam's feet away from his legs and they tussle briefly before Adam presses a knee between his and throws an arm around him, resting his cheek on John's shoulder. John holds his breath for a second, then raises a hand to slide his fingers into Adam's still-damp hair.

Despite the relative comfort they're now in, John can't sleep, even though Adam's out like a light and he's usually the one who has trouble sleeping. And the thing about John being left to his own devices, with no need to worry about zombies bursting in to try and eat his squishier parts, is that John starts thinking too much.

He thinks about the first time that he had to watch Adam go through fighting off the Z-virus. It wasn't pretty, but at least there had been people who had known what was going on. This latest bite, the one that was now infected, John had had to help him through on his own. He'd had a fever and he'd had nightmares and he'd lashed out and slept for nearly two days straight, tossing and turning and fighting while they were locked in a warehouse just over the Texas border from Arizona with zombies scratching at the door.

And even now, John worries. What if the resistance only extends so far. What if Adam, even now, is slowly-but-surely turning into a zombie? John worries, even though Adam's body is hot beneath his hands, through the thin t-shirt he's sleeping in and his heartbeat is strong.

"Are you feeling me up while I'm asleep?" Adam asks suddenly, the words half-muffled by John's shoulder. He raises a hand up and sweeps his hair out of his face, stretching his body out and pressing his mouth to the corner of John's. "You could at least wake me up."

"I was thinking. Making sure you were alive, you know. Not a zombie," John replies, and Adam laughs, pressing his face into John's neck.

"I'm still breathing," Adam says, then props himself up on his elbow, looking at John.

"Yeah, well. You're too hot."

"It's hot outside."

"No, like. It's not hot in here. We're not outside. You have a fever or something."

"Is this about the bite? Because if I had a fever, my whole body would be hot and I'd feel cold. Right? But this is just my feet, which are legitimately cold, by the way." To prove his point, Adam pressed his toes against John's calves. They were still cold.

"I just don't want you to get gangrene or something," John said. "Zombie teeth aren't clean, I'm sure."

"Probably not, since they're rotting."

"Can you take this seriously?"

"Sure, but then I'd probably go crazy."

John sigheds dramatically, glares at Adam, then rolls over onto his side, giving Adam his back. Adam shifts to lean against him, draping his arms around John.

"Come on, don't worry about it. I'm not going to die from this infection. If I thought that Greta wouldn't turn me in or something I'd ask her to look at it. Maybe I can tell her that _you_ bit me in a fit of passion," Adam suggests.

"That will go over well, I'm sure," John says, then pushes at Adam until he can lay back down on his back. "Since this place is pretty much all rednecks."

"Greta didn't seem like she'd be upset if people happened to be... interested in people of the same sex," Adam says. The way he says it is hilarious to John, who starts laughing.

"Fine. In the morning we'll go talk to her and try and... feel her out or something," John says.

"Meanwhile, I'd like to feel you... up," Adam says, then starts snickering, burying his face in John's shoulder.

"Shut up, you're an asshole," John says, but he's laughing too, taking the sting from the words.

"Okay, but really - when's the next time we're going to be in an air conditioned room in a bed?" Adam says, pushing himself up on one arm and leaning over John. He leans down and presses his mouth against the skin beneath John's ear. "I still have condoms in my bag. You could..."

"If they're not expired," John says. Adam just grins and kisses him, then slithers from beneath the sheets to grab for his backpack, tugging it open and tossing the foil packets on the bed to John, who starts sifting through them, looking for the ones that are still in date.

Adam continues to rummage through his backpack until he comes up with the tube of lube. He holds it up and makes a sad face at John. The tube is nearly empty. John rolls his eyes.

"We're gonna have to hit a drug store or something," Adam says.

"Yeah, 'cause it's so important that we fuck," John says, finally finding a packet that's still in date. He tosses the expired ones toward the garbage bin near the desk.

"Hey," Adam says, climbing back up on the bed. "I'm concerned about our quality of life. We could die any day."

"I could," John says.

"No, seriously. If I went down under a pile of zombies, I'd be done. Just because I don't turn into one doesn't mean they won't fucking eat me," Adam says, sprawling out on his stomach. "So. Quality of life, John Nolan. "

John just laughs and shakes his head, pushing on Adam's shoulder until Adam shifts onto his back. Adam's only still laughing until John's mouth meets his, then he's serious, tangling his fingers up in John's hair and keeping their mouths crushed together.

They stay that way, kissing each other at their leisure, because it's not often that they've got the chance to just lay somewhere and make out. Safe houses are amazing, John thinks somewhere in the back of his mind, but then he feels Adam's teeth scrape across his lip and he forgets to think about anything.

Adam's the one that initiates something more, because Adam always is - John would be content to lie there and kiss Adam until the sun came up if Adam would let him, but John also knows that's due in part to the fact that he lives in fear of Adam accidentally passing on the Z-resistance and turning John into a zombie.

John doesn't bother trying to get Adam's shirt off - he's on his back on the bed and that's too much hassle that neither of them want to deal with. They fumble at each other to get their pants down far enough that they can do anything, and John gets distracted by Adam's hands on his ass and ends up accidentally giving Adam beard-burn on his neck.

Adam doesn't really seem to care, so John doesn't apologize. Adam shoves the condom left on the bed and the bottle of lube at John, and slides his pants the rest of the way off while John is busy getting himself ready. Adam sits up and tugs his shirt off, slicking a condom onto his own cock before stretching back out on the bed. John pretends he can't see the medical tape that creeps up over Adam's shoulder and toward his chest where it holds gauze padding over the bite wound.

John has either forgotten, or never realized, how loud Adam is when it comes to sex. Maybe he never realized, because normally they don't have to keep their noise to a minimum when it comes to this sort of thing. Normally, the only other people that could possibly overhear them are zombies. Not humans they'll have to look in the eye in the morning.

"Adam, shut the _fuck_ up," John whispers, pressing their mouths together and cutting off Adam's desperate noises as John stretches him open with two fingers. John suspects that Adam secretly enjoys the idea that someone might overhear them. John wants to strangle him.

John thinks that Adam might enjoy that, too.

John pushes Adam's knees up on the bed and guides himself in, hoping that no one can hear the way Adam breathes out John's name over and over as John pushes into him, Adam's fingers grasping at the sheets and twisting them up. They must be sturdy sheets.

John goes for Adam's neck as they fuck, scraping his teeth across fresh-shaven skin and using his tongue there. Adam's mouth is busy - John's got a hand over it to muffle the sounds Adam makes as he bucks beneath John.

John likes it when Adam comes, clenching tight around him and making John gasp. A few more rough thrusts and John finishes as well, collapsing down against Adam and moving his hand from Adam's mouth so they can kiss properly once more.

They lay silently, breathing hard and a little sweaty, for a while before John pulls out and moves to grab the ever-so-convenient box of kleenex that sit on the dresser across the room, tying off the condom and tossing it into the trash can. He even takes the time to pick up the discarded expired ones from the floor, and wipes himself off with a kleenex, tossing the box to Adam.

Adam cleans himself up as well, and John waits until he's done and everything's disposed of before he climbs back into bed. He tries to ignore the look on Adam's face at his avoidance, but John thinks Adam has to know that it's for John's own safety. It wouldn't be like this - they wouldn't have to be so careful - if it weren't for Adam's Z-resistance being activated.

Fucking zombies.

***

Adam's a shameless flirt.

No one else seems to notice. Actually, John's not sure that Adam flirts with anyone but him. Chad and Hayley are only interested in each other, and Adam clearly respects the couple and puts them in a space clearly marked "off-limits." Adam doesn't seem to flirt with Eddie, either, but John suspects that it's because Eddie's more like an older brother than anything else.

John thinks maybe it's just him. He doesn't know what makes him so special.

Adam is pushy, too. And it doesn't help that he's attractive - John tries to ignore that detail, but the more Adam flirts with him, makes passes and offers things that John isn't sure he wants, the more acutely aware John is of, say, the way Adam's pants fit.

John hates the way Adam's pants fit.

They've settled in a warehouse for the time being, somewhere east of Las Vegas, and Adam wanders in fresh from a shower and flops down next to John on the dusty, ratty couch that's in the break room, careful of the stray spring that's poking out.

"So, Johnny," Adam starts, and John makes a face at the nickname. "Let's skip the formalities and pretend that you haven't been staring at my ass for days."

Well, that's one way to start a conversation. John feels his skin get hot _all over_ and he's grateful that he's fully dressed and his beard covers most of his face. Otherwise Adam would know that he's totally embarrassed. Adam can probably tell anyway by the horrified noise John makes as soon as the words are out of Adam's mouth.

"I mean, seriously, I'm cool with that," Adam says, and John knows that Adam is nothing if not determined when he puts his mind to things. "And I haven't been hitting on you for nothing, you know."

"Adam, I don't think - " John starts, but Adam cuts him off.

"Sex is a great stress reliever," Adam says. He looks pretty serious, but John can't help laughing at him. He looks so hopeful.

"I don't think it's a good idea," John says. He watches Adam's eyebrows move toward each other as the implied 'no' sinks in. "I mean. Because I'm not Z-Resistant. No offense to you, or anything, but I don't want to end up a zombie."

"Okay, but we could use protection. It's not like condoms are hard to come by or anything - Hayley would definitely be knocked up if they were." Adam has a point, John has to admit.

"Adam, I don't even know if I could kiss you without ending up a zombie," John says.

"You could," Adam says, and John hates the way he looks so eager and earnest, because John really does want him. John's sense of self-preservation his stronger than his desire to get laid. "I saw a report about it. The last time we were able to catch the news, there was a story about Z-resistance and how it's transmitted. We'd have to have, like, sores in our mouths and shit."

"You've thought a lot about this," John says.

"I'm always going to be this way. I have to. I like sex, John, I'm not going to stay celibate for the rest of my life because of this fucking... fucking apocalypse."

John laughs.

"Seriously, though. Me and you," Adam says. His face is serious and John knows that this is the point where he can either say yes, or he can say no. Adam's made his case, and John trusts Adam with his life - because if he didn't, he'd never get any sleep at night when Adam's on watch.

"Well," John says. "I don't have any sores in my mouth."

Adam laughs and leans forward to kiss John.

***

Over breakfast the next morning, Jimmy converses in things that are mostly non-answers and monosyllabic grunts, leading John to chalk it up to Jimmy not really being a morning person. Adam makes faces at him across the table and John has to try and keep from laughing until he kicks Adam under the table to make him stop.

Once Jimmy heads out, presumably to round up more survivors and kill more zombies (because who doesn't love to spend their days zombie-killing?), John and Adam head down to the makeshift infirmary. John hopes they'll be able to figure out whether or not she'd turn Adam in if she knew about his Z-resistance without actually having to admit it.

"You two really pissed Jimmy off," Greta says without any real preamble when John and Adam walk through the door. "Come let me look at your head."

"What? How?" Adam asks, confused, and walks over and plops down in one of the chairs, tilting his head so that Greta can look at the cut there.

"The walls here are pretty thin," she says, and John wants to crawl under the floorboards. Of course. Of course someone would hear them.

"Oh," Adam says, sounding uncomfortable. "So, ah..."

"I'm sure it won't surprise you to find out that Jimmy wants you out of here today," Greta says, checking the stitching on the cut. "Fortunately, he's agreed to let you stay until these stitches come out. But I had to fight for that."

"Sorry," John says, leaning back against the wall.

"No, he's got no right to just throw you out to the zombies just because he doesn't like what you do in the bedroom," Greta said firmly, her eyes flicking up to John's. "And believe me, he doesn't, so steer clear of him, okay? Your stitches are fine. Did you need anything? You feel all right? Not sick or anything?"

"Um," John started, shifting a bit awkwardly. "Greta. Adam has - you know, an old injury that - uh. We were wondering if you-"

"I've got a bite and it's infected and I need you to look at it and maybe make it not infected," Adam said with a sigh.

"A bite?" Greta asks, looking at him.

"A _bite_ ," he repeats," and tugs his shirt off over his head. "You'll have to take the bandage off - I can't really reach it myself."

"You're infected," Greta says, her voice quiet. She doesn't look like she wants to touch him at all. Adam twists around and looks up at her.

"No. I have a bite. I don't get _infected_ ," Adam tells her.

"I sewed you up - I could have - " She starts. John watches as her face starts to redden with anger.

"Yeah, you did, which I appreciate. You also used gloves to do it, and disposed of everything properly - I watched you," Adam says, staring her down. "You're not going to catch it. Can you look at my shoulder?"

"I-I..." she starts. "You should have told me."

"We didn't want you to refuse to treat his head," John says. "Considering your reaction now, that might have been for the best."

"I wouldn't _refuse_ to treat someone," Greta protests. "I'm a doctor. That's not what I do."

"Sure seems like you're refusing to treat him," John says. Greta frowns at him.

"I'm not going to let you manipulate me," she says. "You've left out a very, very important piece of information. You've brought zombie infection into this safehouse."

"I'm not fucking infected!" Adam yells. "I have a bite wound. I'm probably going to get gangrene and die from that, and _then_ you'll have a fucking zombie in your safehouse, so maybe you should just humor us and _look at my bite_."

"You have absolutely no right to talk to me that way, when I defended you two to Jimmy," Greta says, but she reaches out and pulls the bandage off of Adam's shoulder. Not gently. Adam yelps, coming up off the seat of the chair.

"Fuck!" he yells.

"You watch your mouth," Greta says, pointing a finger in his face. "I'm a lady."

She's silent for a moment as she looks at the bite on Adam's shoulder. "Well, it is infected," she says. "Not the zombie kind. The... germ kind."

"We were pretty sure about that," John says. He's lifted himself up to sit on the edge of one of the tables, and he's swinging his legs slowly back and forth while Greta examines Adam.

"You're probably not going to get gangrene," Greta says. "But I'm going to have to clean this - it's a mess. Why didn't you do something before now?"

"Neither of us are doctors," Adam says. "And it's hard to get the equipment or the time to clean something like that up."

"But it's a zombie bite, isn't it? How did you. How did you get through the detox?" Greta asks.

"We were were locked in some shitty little warehouse for nearly a week," Adam says. "I ... don't remember a lot of it, so."

Greta just keeps shaking her head as she starts trying to clean up the wound. "This is going to hurt," she tells him, and the second the disinfectant hits the wound, Adam tries to squirm away from her. "You have to not move, I need - you know what, get up on the table. John, get up there with him and hold him down."

"What?" John and Adam both ask, in unison.

"Adam, get on the table. John, hold him down. I _have_ to disinfect this wound," Greta says. Adam glares at her while he climbs up on the table and stretches out on his stomach. John just stands next to the table awkwardly.

"What am I supposed to do?" John asks.

"Get up there. Straddle him. Hold his shoulders down. Adam, turn your face away from the wound," Greta orders. "Put all your weight on him, John. I want to get this done as soon as possible."

John climbs up on the table and straddles Adam. "I've never done this with someone watching before," Adam says as John settles into a kneeling position over his ass, his hands pressing down on Adam's shoulders. "I didn't know you were so kinky."

"Adam, shut up," John says, his face flushing red.

Greta pours disinfectant on Adam's shoulder, and he yelps with pain, trying to pull him away. John holds him down as best he can, and eventually Adam runs out of fight and lays there on the table, his body limp beneath John's. He's still conscious, John knows he is, because occasionally he whimpers when Greta's fingers dig in as she tries her best to close up the wound.

She re-applies dressing to the wound, and then she's done. "You can let him up now," she tells John, and John climbs down off the table. Adam turns his head so that he's looking at John.

"It hurts," Adam says.

"I can give you something for the pain, then you might want to rest for a while," Greta says. Adam sits up and John helps him down off the table. Adam is wobbly on his feet, and John slides an arm around his waist.

"I'll take him upstairs," John says. "He can sleep it off - he doesn't need anything for pain." John knew that Adam's display while Greta was cleaning the wound was more a show than anything else. John wasn't sure that Adam really was in as much pain as he was pretending because John had seen him detox from zombie bites on more than one occasion. John knew that Adam had a massive pain threshold.

"If you say so," Greta said, and busied herself with cleaning up after the disinfection.

Once they're in the hallway, John pushes Adam off of him. "Faker," he says. "Why'd you need to put on a show for her like that?"

"It's supposed to hurt. I let it hurt," Adam says, shrugging. "Now hold me up, John Nolan. I'm an invalid."

John snorts, rolling his eyes, but he helps Adam up the stairs anyway.

***

John can't block out the screaming.

Adam slips into the office and pushes the door shut behind him. It does nothing to muffle the sound. Adam's eyes are wide with shock and he's splattered with blood. He stands there with his gun in his hand, and John just stares at him from his place on the couch, knees pulled up against his chest.

"Is he dead?" John asks.

Adam nods his head, letting his gun slip from his fingers as he stumbles across the room and collapses on the couch beside John. He buries his face in John's chest, and for a second, John isn't sure that Adam isn't going to start sobbing. He doesn't, but instead lays there, breathing in and out against John's chest.

John couldn't face it. Couldn't stand the idea that they'd have to kill one of their own before he killed them. He couldn't help hold Hayley back - even though she knew what had to be done, she'd still tried to fight them. He didn't blame her, not really, but John supposed they'd all have to die sometime.

Some of them were just running out of time faster than others.

Outside the office, Hayley was still crying. Adam moved his face from where it was pressed against John's chest and stumbled toward the window, using his faint reflection there to wipe the rest of the blood - John doesn't want to think about _whose_ blood it is - off of his face.

"Are you okay?" John finally asks. Adam continues staring out the window, and doesn't answer. It's starting to get dark outside, the setting sun spilling red-orange light into the room and making the splatters of blood on Adam's shirt darker, almost black. "Adam," he says, lowering his voice even further.

"I had to do it - he asked me to. Does that. He was still alive, John, does that make me a murderer?" Adam asks, still staring out the window. John doesn't think he sees anything, even though John can see that Adam's eyes are open.

"He knew what would happen," John says, curling in on himself where he sits on the couch. He looks away from Adam and stares at a scuff mark that's low on the wall instead. "Either you killed him or he'd kill us. You're not a murderer any more than the rest of us are."

"But I killed him," Adam says. His voice cracks. John gets up and takes hold of Adam's arm, pulling him toward the couch, pushing him into a sitting position, then further until he's stretched out on the sofa. John sits on the floor beside him, leaning against the couch.

"He was already dead, Adam. You know what happens when people get bitten. They turn into zombies. He was already turning. We all knew it. Hayley, me, Eddie - even Chad knew it," John says.

"What if he was like me?" Adam asks. "What if he wasn't going to ... what if he was just going to detox instead."

"We all knew he wasn't," John says. "Even me. Even I could tell that it wasn't. That he wasn't getting better."

Adam doesn't say anything else and John sighs. The light keeps fading from the room, and eventually it's dark, and silent except for their breathing. Even Hayley's sobs have stopped.

It's a long time before either of them moves or says anything. John's almost dozed off, his head leaned back against the couch and Adam's ribs, when Adam finally says something.

"John?" he says, and his voice is barely more than a whisper. John sits up straighter, twists around until he's looking at Adam. The moon's full outside, and it gives enough light that they can see each other's faces.

"Yeah?" John says.

"If this happens. If you get hurt... when the time comes, please promise me you won't ask me to do it. Not to you," Adam says, and his fingers wrap tightly around John's hand, squeezing. It hurts, but it's real. Adam's hands are warm, solid, and alive.

"I won't," John says.

He's not sure it's a promise he can keep.

***

John goes downstairs to see about food, and leaves Adam asleep, curled up on his side. John touches Adam's shoulder while he sleeps; the skin feels cooler, but John isn't sure if that's his imagination or if that's what Greta's disinfecting did.

Jimmy's in the kitchen when John gets down there. Of course he is. The big redneck fixes him with a glare as John enters.

"Uh. Can I. I mean, is there something we can just grab to eat? Sandwiches, or... something?" John asks, feeling more awkward than he has in a long time.

Jimmy just stares at him. John wishes that he could crawl under the floorboards - but Greta said that she'd talked to Jimmy, that they could stay until she took Adam's stitches out.

"I want you out of here in the morning," Jimmy says, taking a step toward John.

"But - but Adam has stitches, and I can't take them out, so -" John starts, but Jimmy takes another step forward. John backs up toward the wall.

"You'll figure out a way to get them out," Jimmy says. "I don't think the zombies are gonna care if he gets a great big scar on his pretty face. You probably won't care that much either, since you people don't fuck face to face."

"Excuse me?" John asks, his eyes going wide and startled. "What are you -"

Jimmy shoves John back against the wall. "I ain't stupid. I know you faggots was fuckin' in my safe house. I oughta tie you out and feed you to those zombies. You're as much an abomination as they are."

"Please get away from me," John says, trying to keep his cool. John's not a fighter, not really. He does what he has to do, and right now he doesn't have to deal with a sweaty dude pushing him against the wall and threatening him.

"What, so you can go back upstairs and fuck your faggot boyfriend?" Jimmy asks.

"Look, that's none of your business. Neither of us are interested in you, so you don't have anything to worry about. I just want to make a sandwich and make sure my friend doesn't end up with some kind of infection in his head because you have a problem with how we do something that doesn't affect you at all," John says, trying to keep his voice level.

"You're an abomination," Jimmy says.

"There are zombies outside and I'm the abomination?" John asks. "Yeah, not so much, man. Get your priorities straight." John ducks down and slips underneath Jimmy's arm, walking across the kitchen. "I'm getting a sandwich. And we're not leaving until Greta says Adam is okay."

"You keep out of my sight, faggot," Jimmy says, and stomps out of the room.

John sags against the counter, his heart racing. He's ready to leave, but he can't. Not yet.

***

John paces back and forth until Eddie threatens to break his legs.

Hayley fell. She tripped, John doesn't know on what, and went down hard, and they swarmed over her, while she lay breathless, the wind knocked from her chest. Adam had gone back for her before John realized what was happening. John would have gone back, too, but Eddie had grabbed hold of his arm and forced him to keep going.

"Don't be fucking stupid," Eddie had said. "If you get bitten, you die. If Adam gets bitten, he goes through a shitload of pain, but he lives. So you wanna run back there like an idiot and get killed?"

John had kept running. They'd made it to the safe house, the two of them, but that had been hours. People had gone out, searching. To see if Adam or Hayley had made it. And now all John could do was pace. Well, he couldn't even pace anymore, because Eddie was sick of watching him.

"What's your problem?" Eddie asks, once John takes a seat on the floor, his back against the wall and his knees pulled up against his chest. "He did something stupid. If he doesn't come back, it's his own fault."

"Shut up," John says. "He's just holed up somewhere waiting until it's safe."

"You... you're in love with him, aren't you," Eddie says, and looks at John, his eyes wide and startled.

"I'm not in love with him," John protests.

"You are," Eddie says. "And that's great, but it's going to get you killed. Because you're stupid and you tried to go back for him."

"I -" John started to protest, but then a siren started blaring. He'd heard the sirens before, when they'd come into the safe house. It signaled the opening of the gates, and they were supposed to go down, to be ready with their guns.

Eddie reached out a hand to John to pull him to his feet, and John took the offered hand. They headed downstairs, guns drawn. A truck rolled through the gates and screeched to a stop in the dust. They pressed closer, trying to see who was coming in, hoping that Adam and Hayley would be in the back of the truck.

"We brought one back," someone was yelling, John went on tiptoe, trying to see, but there were too many people moving, milling around.

"Please let it be Adam," John whispers, without realizing. He steadies himself with a hand on Eddie's shoulder, but Eddie pushes him away, trying to shoulder his way through toward the truck.

"Let go," someone's saying, and John's heart jumps up into his throat, because it's Adam, that's Adam's voice, Adam is alive.

"You all right?" Eddie bellows, because he can't see any better than John can.

"No," Adam yells back. "Let go and get the fuck out of my way. Let. Go. Let me go or I'm going to fucking bleed on you and then you're going to turn into a fucking zombie 'cause I'm positive and I've been bitten and I'm _bleeding_."

A ring of people clears around Adam and he stumbles as a guy lets go of his arm abruptly. "John. Eddie," he says, and stumbles forward. It takes both Eddie and John to keep him on his feet. His hair is stuck to the side of his face with blood where they scratched him with their nails.

His shirt is ripped, and there's a bite on his forearm. John can't see the other one. "You don't have any open wounds, do you?" Adam asks, and then he passes out, slumping against John heavily. They crash to the ground and John looks up at Eddie, at everyone standing in a ring around them.

***

John dozes for most of the afternoon, slipping in and out of sleep with every movement Adam makes next to him on the bed. After hearing about John's run-in with Jimmy in the kitchen, Adam had been ready to leave. John had barely been able to talk him out of walking out right then. John would leave, and gladly, but he wants to make sure the stitches come out and Adam's infection goes away.

Adam is reading some ratty copy of _Fight Club_ that he's been carrying around for God only knows how long. John's never seen him finish it or start it over, but he's seen Adam reading it enough times that he knows that's a thing that must happen pretty often. Reading the same thing over and over doesn't seem to bother Adam the way it would John.

The light's changed in the room, shifting from daytime to late evening, when Adam rolls over and slides his arms around John, book discarded on the nightstand. He settles against John with a sigh, his fingers closing loosely around the fabric at the side of John's t-shirt. John rests a hand on Adam's forearm and closes his eyes again. He doesn't have anything better to do, and it's nice to get to sleep in relative safety for once.

Adam doesn't say anything, and John assumes that he's fallen asleep, when he finally says something. "We should leave tonight," he says, and John heaves a sigh, shifting Adam's arm and rolling onto his side until they're facing each other. "I mean it, John. This isn't a good place for us to stay."

"You have stitches in your head and an infected bite on your back, Adam," John says. "We have to stay here."

"Yeah, well, better infection than being staked out for the zombies by some crazy redneck who thinks it's his right to play God because he thinks it's wrong to want a dick in your ass," Adam snaps, frowning at John. John wishes that he hadn't said anything about that particular part of his conversation with Jimmy, but it's too late to take it back now.

"Well, forgive me if I don't want to get miles from help and have you fall over and die from an infection. Because then you'll turn into a zombie and I'll have to kill you and I can't do that, Adam," John snaps, his voice rising in volume as he speaks. Adam flinches from John yelling at such close range, and suddenly John feels overwhelmed with guilt. "I'm sorry," he says quietly. "I shouldn't yell at you. Just. I love you and I don't want you to die like that."

Adam looks startled at the admission, and opens his mouth like he's going to say something, but he can't make words come out. John's said it. Something he couldn't admit to himself or anyone else months before now hangs between them, and the longer Adam is silent, the sicker John feels.

John remembers Adam asking John not to make him pull the trigger, if it came down to John becoming a zombie. John had thought that meant something, that maybe Adam cared too much to be the one to do it. John wonders if that was wrong, if it was just Adam's sense of self preservation.

John feels hot and cold all over and he closes his eyes, swallowing hard. Adam still doesn't say anything, and John takes a deep breath, opening his mouth to explain himself when Adam's mouth bumps against his, and Adam's fingers dig into John's back as Adam pulls him close. Adam kisses him long and hard before pulling away, pressing his face into John's shoulder and holding onto him tightly.

Adam still doesn't say anything. John aches deep in his chest. It's not the first time that John's loved someone who didn't love him in return. He wonders if he's stupid for letting himself fall for someone in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, or if that's the reason _why_ he fell. But Adam keeps kissing him, and holding onto John like he's afraid John will try and escape him, and John wonders if it's just that Adam can't admit it to himself, let alone out loud to John.

John doesn't know how much time passes before Adam stops kissing him. He whispers, "what are you thinking about?" and John tries to think of a way to answer that won't hurt anyone's feelings.

"You," John says. It's true enough, and completely neutral.

"Yeah?" Adam asks, and pushes his hand up under John's shirt, his fingernails raking over bare skin. "What about me?"

"Did you think we'd end up like this, when you brought me out of that lounge in the airport?" John asks. "Together? In Texas, no less."

"No," Adam says, shaking his head slightly. He looks at John, then bites his lip, thinking. "I didn't think I'd want to keep you safe so badly, either."

John thinks that this might be as close to an admission of feeling as Adam is going to get, at least for that night. He throws his arm across Adam's waist, moving closer and kissing him, starting something for once as Adam's hand moves over his bare skin beneath his shirt.

They'll have to go downstairs for dinner, and face everyone, maybe even Jimmy, but for now, the room is growing dimmer and it feels too good to have Adam's hands on his skin for John to think about moving.

***

It's up to Eddie and John to carry Adam somewhere safe. They can't stay at the safe house, not with Adam having been bitten and half the people there believing he'll turn into a zombie, and the other half having heard his declaration of being Z-resistant and wanting to turn him in to the government. It's made more difficult to move him because they don't know when he was bitten - how long has the virus been working its way through his body, and how long will it be before his body starts fighting it off and they have to do something to hold him down so that he doesn't hurt himself?

At least the area is suburban, and there are plenty of places they'll be able to hide. They each loop one of Adam's arms around their shoulders and start walking. He stumbles along between them, his head hanging down, his shotgun and backpack weighing him down between them. They need a vehicle, and soon, or they're going to be dinner for the groaning masses.

Adam slumps heavier and heavier between them as they continue walking, looking for any kind of vehicle that might come in handy. So close to the safe house, the area's been picked clean of any vehicles that might still have the key in the ignition, and neither Eddie nor John know how to hot-wire a car. Adam's the one who would normally take care of that, but Adam is barely conscious enough to keep his feet moving, let alone coherent enough to jack a car.

John's lost count of the blocks they've walked when Adam slumps between them, going to his knees on the pavement and gagging. They're nowhere near safe and Adam's making a lot of noise. John kneels down next to him and pulls his hair back out of the way. They're both going to be covered in vomit. Eddie looks at them, pissed.

"I should leave you both to die," Eddie tells them. John knows that he won't - John remembers how worried Eddie looked the last time Adam was bitten, and how upset he was after Chad died. The anger is his way of dealing with Hayley's death, and with Adam detoxing again.

"Or you can go and break into one of those houses and help me get him inside," John says. "We'll board up the windows. Stick to the second floor. We'll make it work."

Eddie jogs away from them, looking for, John assumes, a house with few windows on the bottom floor, something they'll be able to board up and defend easily. John sits on the pavement with his gun at the ready, holding Adam's hair back as he retches. There's nothing left for him to throw up, and he shakes against John as his body strains to expel more.

Fortunately, Eddie returns before any zombies find them, and reports that he's found a likely place. He lifts Adam under the arms and John grabs Adam's legs, and they move as fast as they can.

They leave Adam draped across the couch in the living room as they work at boarding up the doors. Eddie's been lucky enough to find a place that has shutters, and there are plenty of nails in the shed. After the day they've had, it's a real stroke of luck, and he and John work as quickly as they can to nail the shutters closed and board up the doors as best they can. John smells sickeningly like sweat and vomit and he hopes the house still has running water and he'll have a chance to take a shower and maybe even rinse out some of his clothes.

When they've boarded up the windows and doors to the best of their abilities, they haul Adam up the stairs. There's a master bedroom at the end of the hall with an attached bathroom, and despite both of them wishing they could use the room for themselves, they both know it'll make things easier to put Adam in that room.

"Strip him down," Eddie says, and John stops, slightly appalled. Eddie just looks at him. "What? You both smell like puke and he's covered in blood. We'll clean him up before we have to tie him down."

"Tie him down?" John asks, confused. Why would they have to tie him down?

"He gets violent. He takes these stupid risks, gets himself bitten and has to go through this fucking detox, and he gets fucking violent and tries to hurt himself and anyone else nearby," Eddie says. He rummages through the closet and finds a hanger of neckties. He pulls a couple of them off the hanger and tests them for strength. "You didn't watch the whole thing last time, John. We kept you out of it. You have no idea what's really going to happen. So please, just do as I say, okay?"

Together, they strip Adam down to his underwear and drag him into the bathroom. The water doesn't get that warm, but it runs and it's not freezing, and it means they're able to wash all of the blood and the vomit off of Adam. He only tries to fight them once, when they have to dump water over his head, and he leaves red welts down Eddie's arm where his nails scratch. Mostly, though, he's terrifyingly quiet and compliant underneath their hands.

They struggle to get Adam up and out of the bathtub - he's completely unconscious by this point, his skin hot to the touch, even after having been bathed in cool water. John knows that the fever is a good thing, but it doesn't make him less scared that Adam will somehow die and turn into a zombie. He and Eddie drag Adam back into the bedroom and lift him up onto the bed. Eddie doesn't say anything when John checks Adam's pulse, or watches to make sure he's still breathing.

"Should we dress him?" John asks after a moment. He's sitting on the edge of the bed next to Adam, lacing their fingers together, unlacing them, then putting them back. John's a nervous wreck.

"You can. If you want. I'm not - I don't thing he'd appreciate it much if he knew I was fucking around with his clothes while he was out," Eddie said. "But I mean - you're fucking him, he probably won't care if you do it."

John feels every part of his body go hot with embarrassment. He's not ashamed that he and Adam are having sex, but to have Eddie state it so baldly when they'd attempted to be relatively low-key regarding whatever their relationship to each other was caught John off guard.

"We're not -" John starts, then stops. It's a lie, and he knows it, but he doesn't like having it out there like that, especially considering the situation. 

"Look, I know you guys were trying to keep it quiet, but you didn't, and I know that you're fucking, so don't lie to my face," Eddie says. "I'm going to go into the other bathroom and take a shower. If he starts thrashing around, tie him up or he'll hurt both of you. And don't take it hard if he tries to hurt you - he doesn't have much control over what he's doing. It's the virus."

Once Eddie's gone, John unzips Adam's backpack and rummages through it, looking for clean clothes. That's the easy part, even though even John can't remember the last time they had a chance to even think about _rinsing_ their clothes, let alone washing them. Maneuvering Adam's dead weight into clean clothes is a completely different story, and when he's done, if he didn't still smell like vomit and want a shower himself, he'd sprawl out next to Adam and sleep.

He's sitting on the bed, waiting for Eddie to come back when Adam starts trembling. John's not even sure he feels it at first, but it soon progresses to full on tremors, like he's having a seizure. John fights to hold him down, and yells for Eddie.

Eddie returns in just his underwear, still dripping water and together they get Adam tied down. He's shaking and moaning, and John feels so fucking helpless, but he knows there's nothing he can do. This is what it's like, Eddie explains, and goes back to finish his shower, leaving John sitting on the bedroom floor, watching as Adam struggles to get free.

***

John wakes up to a sound. At first, he's not sure he heard anything at all, but underneath the sound of Adam's breathing he can hear footsteps moving away from the door. John moves Adam's arm off of him and slides out of the bed, moving across the floor as quietly as he can. He reaches out and tries the knob.

They've been locked in.

John walks back to the bed and climbs up. "Adam," he says, shaking Adam's shoulder. "Adam, they locked us in."

"What?" Adam asks, sitting up. His hair falls in a tangle around his face, and John can't resist reaching out and brushing it aside. Adam smiles at him sleepily. "Why would they lock us in?"

"I don't fucking know," John says, frowning. He's pretty sure he does know, and that this is just the start of whatever Jimmy plans to do to them. The precursor to staking them out to be eaten by zombies. He sits there for a moment before finally saying as much to Adam.

"Fuck that," Adam says, and gets up, finding his jeans and tugging them on. John sits on the edge of the bed and watches Adam dress. He also watches Adam pack all of his things into his backpack, like he's ready to leave.

"What are you going to do?" John asks.

"I'm going to get out of here, and then we're leaving," Adam says. "I'm not going to stay here and wait for him to kill us."

"So you're going to leave and maybe die from being infected?" John snaps.

"No," Adam snaps. "I'm not going to fucking die from this infection, John. Greta cleaned it up. I'm going to be fine. Better than I'd be if we stayed here and let him fucking tie us up and feed us to the zombies."

"I don't want to fight with you about this," John says. "The last thing we need to do is fight."

"Then come with me, John. Help me get us out of here," Adam says. He grabs hold of John's hands and pulls him to his feet. "We can't stay here. Maybe... maybe Greta will come with us. We can ask her, if we can get out of here."

"Fine," John says, and starts shoving his things into his backpack. Adam busies himself with taking the door off its hinges. Getting out of the bedroom is the easy part. Getting downstairs and out of the compound is a completely different story, especially if they're going to ask Greta to come with them.

***

"John?"

John's asleep on the floor, wrapped up in a ruffled pink blanket stolen from the bedroom down the hall. Eddie had rolled his eyes when he'd seen John walking in with it to sleep on the floor of the master bedroom. Adam didn't need to be watched constantly - and he was especially boring when he was unconscious. John just didn't want to leave him to suffer alone.

John sits up, blinking sleepily and fumbling for his glasses. Once they're on, he's able to focus on Adam, who is watching him with his head raised as far as he can get it, his hands and feet still bound to the bedpost. John manages a smile for him.

"How are you feeling?" John asks. Adam drops his head back onto the mattress. Adam is pale and there are dark circles under his eyes. John can see where his straining at the ties around his wrists has rubbed his skin raw, and John assumes that Adam's ankles look the same way.

"Like shit," Adam says. He sounds tired, and John gets up, climbs onto the bed and starts working at the knots around Adam's wrists. Adam hisses as John's fingers brush against raw skin. "How long has it been?"

"Five days. You had two bites to sweat out, so I guess it took longer than just one," John says. He gets one knot undone and climbs over Adam to untie the other wrist.

"I feel like death. And I'm starving. Is there anything to eat here? Where are we, anyway?" Adam asks.

"Well, you're alive, or you could be making a feast of my brains right now and you wouldn't have to worry about whether or not there was any food in this house. Also, we're in some house that Eddie found while you were puking on the sidewalk right after you got bitten. We boarded up the windows, and there's plenty of food downstairs that we can stay here a few more days until you're better," John explains. Adam nods his head and stretches out his wrist, sitting up when John gets his other arm free. Together, they work at the ties on Adam's feet.

"I don't think I'll ever be into bondage after all of this," Adam says, once he's able to get out of the bed and hobble into the bathroom with John's help. John sits on the floor outside and talks to Adam while he putters around the bathroom, getting used to being able to move around again before he gets in the shower to wash off the stench of five days of sweating out zombie infection. When the shower starts up, John busies himself tugging the dirty sheets off the bed and rummaging around in closets until he finds clean ones.

The noise John makes looking for clean sheets brings Eddie upstairs. He's got a glass of water in hand, and he puts it on the dresser and helps John finish up with making the bed. They're throwing the pillows back onto the bed when Adam comes out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. He looks at both of them for a moment, before grabbing his backpack and retreating back into the bathroom.

"Feeling better?" Eddie asks, and Adam cracks the door open. He's wearing underwear, and he's tugging a t-shirt over his head.

"I'm not sweating or throwing up," Adam says, "so I'm going to say yes. My wrists hurt like hell, though." He pulls his jeans on and walks back out of the bathroom. Eddie hands him the glass of water. "Oh Ed, you know me so well."

He walks back to the bed and sits down, draining the glass in one go. John's already sitting there, leaned back on his elbows. "So what are we doing now?" Adam says, putting the glass on the nightstand. "Do we have to leave right now? Because I could use some more rest..."

"Yeah," Eddie says, then turns to leave the bedroom. "We can stay here a few more days."

"I'm going to go downstairs and get something to eat," Adam says, getting back to his feet. John curls up on his side on the bed, closing his eyes to relax and get real sleep for the first time in five days.

***

The house is eerily quiet, at least until Adam bangs the infirmary door open, gun in hand. Greta looks up from what she's doing - cleaning scrapes on a little girl's knees. John backs into the doorway, his own gun in hand, pulling the door shut and locking it behind him.

The little girl starts in with fresh tears and Greta gets to her feet, storming toward them.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she demands, stopping in front of them, hands on her hips. Not even Adam, towering over her and staring down, seems to be able to intimidate her into backing down. "You aren't allowed to come in here with weapons drawn. Get out!"

"We're leaving, don't worry," Adam says. He lowers his gun but doesn't put it away.

"Bye?" Greta says, sounding a little confused when neither of them move.

"He means we're leaving. As in, leaving the compound," John clarifies.

"You still have stitches," Greta says, looking at Adam's forehead. "You're not going anywhere."

"No. We're leaving. You're welcome to come with us, but Jimmy's already threatened to stake us out to feed the zombies," Adam said. John was a little surprised by how calm his voice sounded, considering how angry John knew he was.

"He wouldn't dare," Greta says, shocked.

"He already locked us in our room. Adam took the door off the hinges so we could get out," John says. Greta's eyes go wide.

"I can't just leave them without a doctor - and it's safe here..." Greta says. John can see that she doesn't want to go, just by the way she glances over at the little girl sitting on the counter. Her life is here.

"Tell me how to take the stitches out," John says. Greta shifts to stare at him for a moment, then nods.

***

John's been lying awake, listening to Eddie moving around in the house for what he judges to be an hour when he hears the door slam. He untangles himself from the sheets and runs to the window that faces out into the street. He doesn't see anything.

Then a bright flash of color catches the corner of his eye. An orange backpack on the back of a person, moving too fast to be the undead. Eddie. John hurries back across the room, out into the hall, and down to the room where Eddie slept the night before. All of his things are gone.

He's gone.

John leans against the doorway, staring at the block of sunshine on the floor for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do. Does he go back now, tell Adam that Eddie's gone, and suggest they try and look for him, catch him and bring him back? John knows that going out alone is basically a death sentence.

He's scared to think that that's what Eddie wanted - he couldn't pull the trigger himself, so he left, and he's going to go out fighting.

John collects himself after a few minutes, and walks downstairs, checking the ground level doors and windows, making sure they're all closed and locked tightly. He knows that the zombies could break the windows at any time, but he hopes they won't realize that he and Adam are hanging around.

He checks to see if there's food before heading back upstairs. He's not hungry, and feels a little sick inside, but he doesn't want to leave yet unless they have to, knowing that Adam is still recovering from his bite detox. He goes back to the master bedroom, locking the door behind him.

Adam's still asleep, curled up on his side with his back to the door. His skin still seems too pale to John, in contrast to his tattoos or the sheets. But still, he doesn't seem as pale as he was, and the patch of gauze that covers the bite on his shoulder is still pristine white with no blood soaking into it. John stands next to the bed, staring, watching Adam's ribs rise and fall with each breath he takes. John climbs back into the bed, curling close to Adam's back, and drapes one arm over Adam's side.

He'll tell Adam that Eddie left when he wakes up. There's no need to disturb him for things they can't change.

***

"Hurry up."

"Shut up and let me work or you get under here and do this," Adam snaps. He's lying with his head under the dash board of Jimmy's truck, trying to hot-wire it. "Better yet, go find a truck that's got _keys_ and stop harassing me."

"Don't get bitchy with me," John says, but goes to check if there are keys in any of the other vehicles again, even though he's already checked and Adam's already checked and that's why Adam's trying to hot-wire the truck in the first place.

The truck roars to life and John hears Adam let out a victory yell as John comes jogging back to the truck and climbs up into the passenger side.

"I feel like an asshole stealing this truck when he helped us out before," John says as he buckles himself into the seat. Adam steps on the gas and maneuvers out of the garage, toward the compound gates.

"Yeah, well, I would, but he locked us in a room and threatened to feed us to the zombies, so, you know, not so much. And a full tank of gas. And gas in the back," Adam says. "So, you know, fuck him."

John sighs, and maybe he has an overdeveloped sense of guilt, but he genuinely does feel guilty for stealing the truck. He doesn't try to press the issue with Adam, who's already in a bad mood that's deteriorating the longer they're in this mess.

They're almost to the gates - which are opening, seeing the familiar truck headed toward them - when the first shots ring out.

John hears the sound of the tire exploding - they're willing to risk anything to keep John and Adam from leaving, whether to keep the vehicle or out of a sense of divine righteousness. Adam jerks the wheel, trying to keep control of the truck with one tire blown out. He fails, and the truck smashes into the side of the cinder block garage.

When the airbag deploys, John blacks out from the impact.

***

Between the butt of the shotgun and Adam's boots, he makes short work of the lower half of the glass doors, then gestures for John to duck under first.

"You're too kind," John says, then ducks beneath the bar across the center of the door and into the drugstore.

It's surprising to find a drug store that hasn't already been completely ransacked, but maybe this town succumbed to the infection faster than some of the others they've been through. Adam heads straight back toward the medical supplies, his gun still drawn. John follows to cover him while he shoves gauze into his backpack.

Adam's engrossed in stuffing things in his bag and he doesn't hear the step-drag sound that indicates they're not alone in the store. John turns his back to the shelf and listens, then turns toward the sound just in time to see the zombie come shuffling around the corner.

"Firing," John says. He's got the gun aimed above Adam's head, and Adam drops the gauze in his hands to cover his ears. John fires, and the zombie goes down. Adam uncovers his ears and looks up at John as John walks over to fire the second shot.

"Nice shot," Adam says, his eyes following John as John moves. He goes back to shoving things in his bag, packing them in as tightly as he can. "Gimme your bag," he says. John finishes off the zombie's head and shrugs the backpack off, tossing it to John.

When they were a larger group, everyone had a designated thing to carry. This meant that if someone fell behind, they lost everything. Now that it's just Adam and John, they have to be more careful. If one of them goes down - God forbid - and the other has all of the food or the ammunition, whoever's left is screwed. It's an unspoken agreement that they'll both carry supplies. Adam packs the bottom of John's bag full of gauze and pills and creams.

"Let's see what there is to eat," John says, walking out to the end of the aisle. Now that they know they might not be the only ones in the store, Adam stands up to cover John's back as they move through the aisles.

The thing about big chain drugstores is that they have everything. Well, almost everything, anyway. They're full of food and medical supplies, and more often than not that's what they find themselves needing. The only thing that's better is a Wal-Mart - especially in the south. Because, John has learned, Wal-Marts in the south? Sell ammunition, and occasionally have guns. And John is pretty sure that's simultaneously awesome and horrifying.

Once they're stocked up, they duck back out the door and head on their way. It's not long before it starts getting dark - John has no idea what time it is, and his watch is long gone. They need to find a place to bed down for the night. It's infinitely more dangerous to travel at night than it is during the day, and John feels like they take enough chances without taking this one.

They find a suitable looking place, and Adam picks the lock, letting them inside with ease. He closes it behind them, and they find a place upstairs to barricade themselves in.

"Sometimes," Adam says later, when they're sprawled out on the bed after dinner, sleepy but not tired enough to try and sleep, "I think that it might be cool to know how to shoot a bow and arrow, you know? Like, light the tip on fire and nail the fuckers in the head with it."

"Uh huh," John says. "You'd have to spend forever practicing, and you'd probably burn yourself more often than you'd actually hit them."

"Don't ruin my fun, John. A man's gotta have dreams," Adam says, giving John the finger. John laughs, but it's not happy.

What have they gotten to that having dreams of shooting a zombie in the head with a flaming arrow is something worth dreaming about?

***

John doesn't know how long he was blacked out, but when he opens his eyes he can hear voices - people shouting. It hurts to breathe, and he wonders if the combination of seat-belt and air-bag hasn't at least cracked his ribs. He pushes the bag away from him, trying to maneuver his way out of the cab of the truck.

Then he remembers Adam, and that Adam was driving.

"Adam," he says, and it hurts to take a deep enough breath that he's able to speak. He looks over, sees Adam slumped across the steering wheel with blood dripping from his head to splash onto the knee of his jeans. John almost gags.

"Adam," he repeats, then reaches over to shake Adam's shoulder. Then John realizes that no one is helping them. They're yelling and talking, but they're waiting to see if it's going to be zombies getting out of the truck. Adam's head rolls to the side. His face is covered in blood - he hit his head.

Adam looks like a PSA for wearing a seat belt, and John feels panic welling up in his chest. It hurts almost more than his cracked-or-broken ribs do. "Adam," he says, shaking Adam's shoulder again.

He lifts his head and turns toward John. He opens his mouth like he's going to say something, and blood spills out, dripping down his chin and splattering on his shirt. John looks at him, confused, until Adam leans forward, moving too fast for anyone who's just been in the accident they have.

John realizes what's happening too late when Adam's teeth sink into the arm that he holds up to defend himself. Then John is screaming.

There's nothing to use as a weapon. They're halfway through the side of the building and John can't get his door open, and Adam - no, the thing that used to be Adam - is trying to eat him and his gun disappeared in the impact.

Then he remembers. He remembers the shotgun in the makeshift holster that Adam wears, and he knows that with Adam half on top of him it will be within easy reach. Adam pulls back and sinks his teeth into John's arm again, digging deep into the meat while John reaches for the gun.

He gets his grip on it, pulls it free of the holster, and presses it against Adam's head.

"I'm sorry," John says, just before he pulls the trigger.

***

Adam sprawls out on the floor amongst the hay as John tosses the ladder to the side. They were lucky to even find the barn. John had thought they'd be spending the night out in the open once again, trying to keep moving even though they were exhausted.

They share a cold dinner from cans as they sit at the edge of the loft, watching the moon arcing across the sky before John calls it quits and moves toward the back of the loft where the wind doesn't blow in as much to curl up to sleep. He pulls the thin blanket out of his backpack and spreads it out.

He's dozing when Adam comes over with his own blanket to join him, draping the blanket over them and curling up next to John. It's not long before he's sliding his fingers into John's hair and kissing him. John stretches against him lazily, and despite the location they have the rare chance to take their time with each other.

They end up watching the sun come up with their legs hanging over the edge of the loft, Adam's arm looped across John's back.

"One day when this is all over, we won't have to run anymore," Adam says. "We can just stay in one place and have all of the time in the world."

"Together?" John asks.

"I don't see why not. I don't have anything to go back to," Adam says. It's a depressing subject and John lets it drop, pressing a kiss to Adam's jaw.

***

When John opens his eyes, he's in the infirmary.

He doesn't know how long he's been out, but he knows that his entire body feels tired. There's a thick white bandage around his forearm, and the same around his chest. He stares at the ceiling for a long time, until Greta moves into his vision.

"You're lucky," she says.

"Am I?" he asks. When he closes his eyes again, he remembers pulling the trigger, remembers the zombie's head flying back, brains and blood splattering the cab of the truck. Remembers that that zombie had once been Adam. Remembers the zombie's teeth tearing into his arm, the one that's bandaged now.

"You're resistant," Greta says. "You could have died from him biting you, but you didn't."

John says nothing. His body aches. His head aches. Underneath it all, his heart aches. He hates himself for being in this situation, for letting himself have feelings that strong for someone.

"I should have died," John says.

"You can keep fighting," Greta says.

"I'm tired of fighting," John says.

"You have to," Greta says. "You have to because Adam would be pissed if you gave up after all this time just because of him. You know he would."

_You didn't even know him_ , is John's first thought, but then he realizes that Greta is right. Adam had been a fighter - John had watched him detox from zombie bites enough times to know that was true. They'd come a long way together. And as much as John wants to call it quits and lay down and die right then, he can't.

He won't.

"Get some rest," Greta says. "Your fever's gone, so you might actually feel better after some sleep now."

John sighs, nods, and closes his eyes.

He'll rest, then he'll keep moving. It's what he knows he needs to do.

***

**End.**


End file.
